LATVIA

The Latvian Final was held on February 24th at the Riga Film Studio, hosted by Justs Sirmais & Dagmara Legante. Before the final there were 3 semi-finals with 8 songs in each. The winner was chosen by a combination of jury (50%) and televoting/online voting/spotify listens (50%). The winner was Laura Rizzotto with “Funny Girl”

Laura is solo on stage in a red dress with black seams. The scene around her is mostly red, either as beams, lights, strobes, shapes or splodges. They all seem to move in time with the minimalistic track. In this way it is slightly reminiscent of Aminata’s performance a few years ago – even the colouring is similar. There are backing vocals on the track but nobody seemed to be visible on the stage with her. It must be said that the production values and camerawork are very good.

This is a jazzy, almost cabaret, song and performance with a minimalist electronic backing track. I would almost expect Jessica Rabbit to come out halfway through. It starts of quite conversational in its style of singing and you find yourself listening very carefully to the words of the song. The structure of the song is pretty much predictable and the sections of the song are well defined. As the song progresses you see that the camera work is very deliberate and focuses a little too much on her gesturing and choreography. Her voice is not bad, and the change between her chest voice and head voice isn’t bad either. She starts to struggle near the end of the song to get the high notes in the chorus and you sense she is tiring by the end – maybe she needs to pace herself better?

This is a very distinctive song and once again we find ourselves hosting a style of song we have not seen yet this year. I have a couple of issues that could be ironed out quite quickly. Firstly, strip back the ‘routine’. By focusing on the movements that are memorable or highlight the narrative it will look slicker and more stylised. OR, in a controversial move, I’d like to see her with a dancer. I could imagine her doing something similar to what she does now but acting out the piece with another dancer (or even 2 other dancers to show the competitive atmosphere). They also need to come up with something more creative in terms of lighting and stage setup. This is not a bad effort but it leaves me cold and slightly disengaged. I can also see this falling flat with the audience in the hall who might feel disengaged from a performance that is very much for the camera.

ARTIST –  Laura Rizzotto

SONG – Funny Girl

MUSIC - Laura Rizzotto

LYRICS - Laura Rizzotto